Enkopiro and the Ololasurai Conservancy: a small camp’s community bargain

Enkopiro Camp is a small, independently owned camp in the Ololasurai Valley, less than 15 km from the Sekenani Gate of the Maasai Mara, and it manages the conservancy it sits in, the Ololasurai Conservancy ¹. Its neighbours are the Isaaten, Ripoi and Siana conservancies ¹. Across the Greater Mara, conservancies of this kind rest on a simple bargain: Maasai landowners lease land for wildlife, and tourism pays for it ².

How a Mara conservancy works

The model grew out of land reform. In the 1990s much of the communal land around the reserve was converted into individual holdings, typically of about 40 hectares ⁴. Tour operators already running camps in the area then pooled these plots into larger blocks that landowners leased to them ⁴. In the most common arrangement, landowners receive fixed monthly lease payments from the operators, independent of the number of tourists; in return they agree to vacate the land and remove settlements and livestock, and grazing is allowed only under a controlled plan ⁵. The conservancies are marketed as exclusive, low-density tourism destinations ⁵.

Lease rates are rarely published. One documented case is an FAO case study of the Olare Orok and Motorogi conservancies, which together cover 15,200 ha: the annual rate agreed in 2006 was KES 2,500 (US$33) per hectare, adjusted to US$41 by 2011, and the 2012 budget for lease payments was US$426,400 for 217 landowners, an average of about US$2,000 per family ¹³.

The umbrella body, the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association (MMWCA), reports 25 conservancies covering more than 180,000 hectares, more than 17,000 landowners, and over US$7 million a year in lease payments from 52 tourism partners ³. These are the association's own figures, and its publications do not all agree; our Greater Maasai Mara profile sets out the differences. Its strategic plan for 2026–2036 aims for 35 conservancies and 100,000 hectares of new conservation area ³. Isaaten, Mara Ripoi and Mara Siana appear by name in the plan's list of conservancies; Ololasurai does not ³. The record does not say why.

A landscape under pressure

The bargain exists because the alternative is visible. A study led by Joseph Ogutu found that between 1977 and 2009 nearly all wildlife species in the Mara region fell to a third or less of their former numbers, in the national reserve and on the neighbouring pastoral ranches alike, and identified human influences as the fundamental cause, pointing to cultivation, settlements, fences and livestock as pressures that need regulating ⁷.

Fencing has since accelerated. Satellite mapping by Løvschal and colleagues found that fenced land in the Greater Mara grew from 35,067 ha in 1985 to 130,277 ha in 2020, 19% of the ecosystem, with a 170% increase between 2010 and 2020 alone ⁸. They describe much of it as led by smallholders seeking to secure their land titles ⁸. Conservancies have slowed enclosure but not stopped it: fenced cover inside them rose from about 1% to about 4% over the same period, and fences crop up within and along their boundaries ⁸. MMWCA's own plan lists fencing within conservancies as an issue to address ³.

The Mara–Loita wildebeest population, estimated at 120,000–150,000 in the 1970s, numbered about 26,700 in 2024 on Kenyan government figures, and the footprint of its migration has shrunk by nearly 90% since 2020 ⁹. A December 2025 fact sheet places the surviving migration in a patchwork of conservancies north and east of the reserve ⁹. Conservancies are not a guarantee against these trends, but they are among the few large spaces in the ecosystem still open to wildlife.

Who the bargain pays

Lease income is regular. Claire Bedelian and Joseph Ogutu surveyed 258 households in Koyiaki Group Ranch, using data from 2009–2010. They found that conservancy payments averaged US$1,135 a year for member households, made up 21% of their income, and helped families avoid selling livestock in hard times ⁵. But grazing restrictions reduce herders' flexibility, lease income is no greater than what livestock contribute, and because payments follow land title, women and other marginalised groups are left out ⁵. In only 3% of the households surveyed was a woman a conservancy member, and payments were usually sent to a husband's bank account ⁵. A 2024 study by the same authors and colleagues in World Development found that land ownership determines who takes part and how much they receive, and warned that schemes built on unequal land allocation could deepen inequities for women and landless households ⁶.

MMWCA, for its part, reports 70 women among its more than 510 community rangers and says that 90% of conservancy governance now meets Kenya's two-thirds gender rule ³. Neither figure shows how lease money is shared inside a household.

Disputes follow from these terms. In 2019 Al Jazeera reported landowners in Mara North and Naboisho who said they had been sidelined when management passed from a for-profit company to a non-profit one, which took a 20% cut of tourism profits, ten points less than its predecessor; some threatened to end their leases early and fence their land ¹⁰. The model's dependence on visitors was exposed by COVID-19, when Conservation International lent more than US$2 million to four Mara conservancies between December 2020 and December 2022 so that tourism investors could keep meeting their lease obligations ¹¹.

Where a small camp fits

Enkopiro reports that most of its staff are Maasai, drawn from communities across the area, and that Maasai knowledge of land and tradition has shaped the camp since it opened ¹. With the Maasai Reto Association it reports work on education, health, water, women's and youth empowerment and vocational training; with the association, the conservancy and neighbouring communities it built the Olchoro Lemayian Primary School, and it reports opening a clinic ¹. Its stated conservation aims are to prevent poaching, habitat loss and conflict between people and wildlife across grassland, woodland, wetland and river habitat ¹.

“For us, being a small camp is not simply about size; it is about having the space to do things with intention,” its co-owner Marta Gras told The Regenera Luxury Magazine ¹.

Size also matters ecologically. A 2025 study by Mogensen and colleagues, covering the reserve and eight surrounding conservancies, found that 24 new camps were built in the study area between 2016 and 2022, that lion density fell as camp density rose, and that it declined in the years after a camp was built ¹². The study did not cover Ololasurai, but it suggests that how many camps a conservancy hosts matters as well as how each one is run.

What the assessment found

In the Regenera Luxury Awards 2026, Enkopiro won Regenerative Community Impact of the Year and scored 81.1 out of 100 in the cultural heritage and community partnership category, with moderate-to-high confidence ¹. Its strongest mark was for local value creation and fair participation (4.70 out of 5); its weakest was for reporting, safeguards and long-term governance (3.35) ¹.

What the public record does not show

The figures that would let a reader judge the bargain are missing from what has been published: the terms of the land leases, how many landowners there are, any revenue share, the number of Maasai employees, the size of the conservancy and the monitoring behind its conservation aims ¹. The independent research above suggests the questions that matter most here: whether payments reach women and households without title, whether fences are advancing in the valley, and whether wildlife is holding up. We found no independent study of Ololasurai itself, and the landowners' own voices are absent from the sources. A stronger record would start with published lease terms, payments broken down by recipient, and wildlife and fence monitoring that others can check.